Who Will Be New Jersey's Arnold?

New Jersey's two gubernatorial candidates, Republican Doug Forrester and Democrat Jon Corzine, both say the key to a healthy budget is ending the financial shenanigans that they call the "corruption tax." A good place to start would be the state's under-funded and over-abused employee pension plan.

Lawmakers have put this pig through so many Tammy Faye Bakker makeovers that it's become the envy of state workers nationwide. The best part is the ease with which the system can be gamed. Two perfectly legal strategies -- "boosting" and "tacking" -- have allowed state employees to walk away with huge payoffs even if they earned modest average salaries over their careers or worked only part-time. "Boosting" means pulling strings to get assigned to unusually high-paying jobs in their last years, which becomes the basis for their pension calculation; "tacking" means adding multiple government jobs to get multiple benefit entitlements.

The poster child is Robert Codey, younger brother of Acting Gov. and Senate President Richard Codey and a state deputy attorney general. The younger Mr. Codey was furloughed to the Union County district attorney's office to help catch mobsters. That's not unusual, but the all-Democratic county board of freeholders then voted to pay him an additional $46,731 on top of his state salary of $93,268 a year. Now he makes $20,000 more than his state supervisor, and more than 136 deputy AGs who outrank him. Nice deal, dude.

Robert Codey, who's been a government lawyer for 30 years, will receive a $98,500 annual pension -- about one-third higher than he would have received had he not taken the Union County assignment. Mind you, the boost and tack didn't go unnoticed in the payroll department. State law required approval by two cabinet-level officials because the increase was so big.

Mr. Corzine says he's against tacking for pension calculations. Mr. Forrester wants to get rid of it altogether. Tacking alone is so pervasive that Gannett News Service found 9,500 people in New Jersey hold 24,000 government jobs. Whoever wins in November shouldn't leave this problem unaddressed for too long: The share of tax dollars devoted to pension payments is now approaching an astronomical 25%, overtaking even Medicaid as a black hole for state taxpayers.